is a Japanese

Japanese people

The are an ethnic group originating in the Japanese archipelago and are the predominant ethnic group of Japan. Worldwide, approximately 130 million people are of Japanese descent; of these, approximately 127 million are residents of Japan. People of Japanese ancestry who live in other countries...

 musician, composer and DJ. He was a founding member of Pizzicato Five

Pizzicato Five

Pizzicato Five was a Japanese pop group best known to audiences in the West in their later incarnation as a duo of Maki Nomiya and Yasuharu Konishi...

 and the only founding member to stay with the group until its breakup in 2002. Konishi's current activities are through his company readymade entertainment and his record label 524 records (a play on words from Konishi's name, as the numbers 524 can be read ko-ni-shi in Japanese

Japanese language

is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...

 using goroawase).

Collaboration

Konishi is a prolific producer

Record producer

A record producer is an individual working within the music industry, whose job is to oversee and manage the recording of an artist's music...

, composer

Composer

A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...

, arranger

Arrangement

The American Federation of Musicians defines arranging as "the art of preparing and adapting an already written composition for presentation in other than its original form. An arrangement may include reharmonization, paraphrasing, and/or development of a composition, so that it fully represents...

 and remix

Remix

A remix is an alternative version of a recorded song, made from an original version. This term is also used for any alterations of media other than song ....

er. He has written, produced and arranged in collaboration with many artists, such as Unicorn

Unicorn (Japanese band)

Unicorn is a Japanese rock band, formed in 1986, consisting of Koichi Kawanishi , Tamio Okuda , Isamu Teshima , Kazushi Horiuchi , and Yoshiharu Abe . They reunited in 2009....

, Towa Tei

Towa Tei

is a DJ, artist and record producer in Yokahoma, Japan.Tōwa debuted as a member of Deee-Lite, from the U.S. label Elektra Records in 1990, and shot to fame via their international hit single, "Groove Is In the Heart"...

, Mari Natsuki

Mari Natsuki

Mari Natsuki , real name Junko Nakajima , is a Japanese singer, dancer and actress....

, Cornelius

Cornelius (musician)

Cornelius is a Japanese recording artist and producer.-Career:Oyamada's first claim to fame was as a member of the pop duo Flipper's Guitar, one of the key groups of the Tokyo Shibuya-kei scene...

, Yumi Yoshimura

Yumi Yoshimura

is a member of the Japanese pop duo PUFFY, along with Ami Onuki.She was born in Neyagawa, Osaka, Japan. In 1995, she learned that there was a talent search underway in Tokyo. She successfully tried out and was paired with Ami Onuki to form the group PUFFY.From 1999 to 2003 she was married to singer...

 of Puffy AmiYumi

Puffy AmiYumi

or Puffy AmiYumi is a Japanese rock duo that is currently signed with Sony Music Japan. The group continues to go by the moniker of PUFFY in Japan, but in order to avoid legal naming conflicts with Sean Combs, it has adopted the name Puffy AmiYumi outside of Japan...

, Alisa Mizuki, Akiko Wada

Akiko Wada

is a female Japanese singer and television performer of Korean ancestry, originally hailing from , Ikuno-ku, Osaka. Born Kim Bok-Ja , like many Zainichi Koreans, she also had a name for everyday use, which was Japanicized . On her selection of Japanese citizenship, her name became , which upon...

, SMAP

SMAP

SMAP is a Japanese boy band formed by Johnny & Associates. While originally consisting of six members, the current group members are Masahiro Nakai, Takuya Kimura, Goro Inagaki, Tsuyoshi Kusanagi, and Shingo Katori...

 and Mika Nakashima

Mika Nakashima

is a Japanese singer, model, and actress. She has achieved five number-one albums in Japan and also embarked on an acting career, most notably in the live-action movie Nana, based on the manga of the same name.- Early life and debut :...

.

Konishi's remixes are featured in a far greater range of recordings. In addition to remixing individual tracks for a wide variety of artists for inclusion in their own releases, Konishi has been a prominent figure in several remix-only projects. Some of these have centered on music from cartoons, such as Lupin III

Lupin III

, also known as Lupin the 3rd, is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Kazuhiko Kato under the pen name of Monkey Punch. The story follows the adventures of a gang of thieves led by Arsène Lupin III, the grandson of Arsène Lupin, the gentleman thief of Maurice Leblanc's series of...

 and Astro Boy

Astro Boy (1960s)

is a Japanese manga series first published in 1952 and television program first broadcast in Japan in 1963. The story follows the adventures of a robot named Astro Boy and a selection of other characters along the way....

. Others have focused on specific artists, such as James Brown

James Brown

James Joseph Brown was an American singer, songwriter, musician, and recording artist. He is the originator of Funk and is recognized as a major figure in the 20th century popular music for both his vocals and dancing. He has been referred to as "The Godfather of Soul," "Mr...

 and Tom Jones

Tom Jones (singer)

Sir Thomas John Woodward, OBE , known by his stage name Tom Jones, is a Welsh singer.Since the mid 1960s, Jones has sung many styles of popular music – pop, rock, R&B, show tunes, country, dance, techno, soul and gospel – and sold over 100 million records...

.

In 2003, he introduced Franco-English pop singer-songwriter MeeK

MeeK (musician)

MeeK , is a Franco-English Alternative pop singer-songwriter, musician and producer...

 to the Japanese public by writing an introductory essay on MeeK's debut album "Psychotique" released on the Indie Tokyo record label MINF.

Other projects

Konishi produced a video game called "Beatmania - The Sound of Tokyo" for Konami

Konami

is a Japanese leading developer and publisher of numerous popular and strong-selling toys, trading cards, anime, tokusatsu, slot machines, arcade cabinets and video games...

's long running Bemani

Bemani

is Konami's music video game division. Originally named the Games & Music Division, or simply G.M.D., it changed its name in honor of its first and most successful game, Beatmania, and expanded into other music-based games.-Bemani video games:...

series. In 2009, he was responsible for the music and music direction of "Talk Like Singing," a musical starring Shingo Katori of SMAP that made its world premiere in New York City.

External links

• The Unofficial Yasuharu Konishi Discography
• readymade entertainment, tokyo
• http://web.archive.org/web/20060508105438/www.pulp-mag.com/archives/5.11/pulpman.shtml